


Things That Will Never Be

by JuicyDangler



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Eventual Romance, F/M, Long, Post-Apocalypse, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-10-17 16:31:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20624102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JuicyDangler/pseuds/JuicyDangler
Summary: The spell over, the glow of the sigil faded as the remnants of the shadows faded like a wispy fog chased away by dawn. His power was an oppressive miasma that hung in the air thicker than smoke. It was as if a lead blanket were being pressed down upon Sakura, smothering her slowly.What had she brought into this world?How could she send it back?“You,” Kakashi said in a low, languid drawl, “have awoken me from quite the long slumber. I hope it’s for something worth my time.”





	1. Threading the Needle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mummapaintstheblues](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mummapaintstheblues/gifts).

> This is my first attempt at an AU, but my friend Orlha (check out her stuff!) gave me this idea and it has been eating me alive, so I tried putting it on paper. I have had a lot of help brainstorming and proofreading this from mummapaintstheblues, The Copy Mistress, Nariko, and countless others. 
> 
> I really hope you guys enjoy this, since it is a different flavor from my other works.

* * *

“Haruno! If you don’t have those files sorted, I swear—” 

The irate, booming voice of her supervisor caused Sakura to start awake with a gasp. His footsteps were pounding down the corridor and towards the cramped fileroom.

Frantically, Sakura hurried to regain her wits and try to remember what had happened. She had been sent to this dingy postage stamp of a room in the bowels of the hospital, ordered to go through the autopsy records and reorganize them. She had done the monotonous task for hours and her feet were killing her, so she had decided to sit down on a little stool in there and pulled out an anatomy book to study for just a few minutes… Now a little puddle of drool marred the print and diagram of muscleature on page 83 and she wondered how long she had dozed off for. 

The door wrenched open and she was yanked forcefully out of the room and into the much more spacious, well-lit corridor. She gave a yelp at the painful grip, and the book she had been trying to hide in the pocket of her dress fell to the floor with a clatter. 

“What’s this?” Ebisu demanded, picking up the book before Sakura could scramble to reach it. He was the assistant administration manager of Konoha Hospital, and he commanded a fearful respect from every last underling, Sakura included. 

Dread mounted in her stomach like lead as he carded through the pages, his mouth settling into a hard line as his face turned red in rage, his hand still clamped like a vice on her forearm. 

“Again with this reading, girl?” he snarled. “I have told you time and time again that your stupid little dreams have no place in reality, and yet you disrespect me by ignoring me and reading when I have given you a task. I’ve tolerated your insubordination far too long.”

He snapped the book shut and began dragging her back into the storage room and closer to the industrial shredder against the far wall.

“No!” she cried out, unable to remain silent. That book had cost her three week’s wages—she couldn’t bear to see it be turned to bits.

“You dare talk back to me again?” the man spat, and he jerked her ruthlessly closer to the shredder as she tugged back. Ebisu’s voice carried down the halls, and three or four other lowly clerks like her had emerged from nearby rooms to watch in shock, too timid to stand up for her but not fearful enough to keep from spectating.

He yanked her even harder, and there was a _ rip _ of fabric as the sleeve of her shirt tore at the shoulder seam. Sakura fell back onto her bottom as Ebisu lost his hold on her, yet he managed to keep his footing. A vindictive glint in his eye, he tossed the book into the shredder and Sakura gave a wail of horror as the blades within came to life like a hundred rageful hornets.

That was one of the texts she needed to memorize in order to take the entrance exams to the medical university. She had worked herself to the point of exhaustion here at the Morino Hospital and then did midnight shifts at a grocery store for weeks on end in order to afford it, and she had only purchased it last month. What was meant to be her ticket out of this nightmare of a life was being reduced to scraps before her.

Her intent on the whirring, gnashing machine took shape, and suddenly there was a mechanical whine and the entire thing rattled and bulged before bursting. Tendrils of verdant vines sprouted forth like tongues of flame, and Ebisu and the onlookers all gasped and cried out—magic was a tool more dangerous than a bomb or gun, and there were exceedingly few people who could use it. 

She hadn’t meant to do that. A fresh wave of panic swallowed up Sakura, who slapped a hand over her exposed shoulder and the mark upon it that labeled her for what she was. 

“You’re a priestess,” Ebisu realized, his startle etched across his raised brows and fearful gaze. 

“I’m not,” she swiftly denied. “I’m not. I just want to work.”

He muttered, “I knew there was something wrong with you, with your unnatural hair and eyes.” Sakura cursed her pink locks and beryl irises for the thousandth time in her life. Before she could give him her usual excuse, his face hardened and he bellowed, “Get out. I won’t employ a liar who can’t control herself.” 

Sakura’s stomach dropped. The grocery store work had run its course last week, and this was her only income. “Ebisu, please—” 

“Do _ not _ make me repeat myself, Haruno.” His tone brooked no dissent, but there was also fear in the depths of his gaze and that of the witnesses. “Leave before something happens that can’t be undone.”

The lump of despair in her throat wouldn’t go away no matter how many times she swallowed, and the air of the dim file room was choked with the apprehension of the staff. It took everything she had to pick herself up off the tile floor. 

Wordlessly, with nothing but her torn sleeve and trampled hopes, Sakura trudged the long walk home. 

Once again, she had lost her job because they had learned what she was. 

The moment an infant was born, before the umbilical cord had been severed, they were given the same caste mark as their parents. The small black tattoo on their left shoulder was drawn with a special ink that could never be removed, even if the patch of skin was cut off, and it determined the infant’s entire life. It sentenced them to the same trade as their parents and their parents before them and it dictated who they could or could not marry. Sakura hated it and everything it stood for. 

There were many castes, some of which were so small their existence could be overlooked, but the priest caste was known by all despite its small population because they were the only people with the ability to use magic. For reasons science had yet to reveal, magic was genetically limited to the clans within this caste. This was why priests were strictly forbidden from marrying outside of the caste, as it would be dangerous if the use of magic spread to the general populace. 

In previous centuries, priests were one of the most powerful and valued castes, relied upon to solve nearly every problem that arose. With the advancement of technology and medicine over the centuries, some of their duties had been taken on by others. There was little need to divine the weather thanks to meteorology, for example, though if fields were withering in drought a priest may be called to summon a localized shower. Medicine had advanced so much that many healing methods of the priests had fallen by the wayside, though the general rule of thumb was to go to healer priests for cuts, sores, and broken bones, and to leave diseases to the doctors and their tests. 

According to her friend Sasuke, the priest caste was the best caste to be born into. People either feared or respected priests, looked to them for aid and guidance, and they rarely went hungry as a result. 

It wasn’t without faults, however. It could be very dangerous depending on the particular line of magic they specialized in. Those who rooted out dark magic and exterminated evil beings like the Uchiha met a grisly fate more often than not, as evidenced by the fact that Sasuke was the last of his line and had grown up alongside them in the orphanage. Also, there were exceedingly few people who had magic in their veins—perhaps one in a thousand. This bred a fair amount of fear and ignorance regarding magic and its users, which then led to the prejudice Sakura had been victim of today. 

As a member of the priest caste, she was expected to learn the magic of her clan and serve her people and country with it. If she chose not to follow that path, there were only three options left to her: use riches and influence to buy her way into a university and then fight to gain employment in the field of her choice, work menial positions like manual labor, filing, or janitorial positions where caste-specific skills were not required, or beg on the streets. 

Sakura had known from a very young age that she didn’t care about magic. Sure, it was interesting, she guessed. But it was also frightening, and she had learned early on that other people tended to react in alarm when she used her magic by accident. She just wanted to be a normal girl, with enough money to choose her future and become a doctor. She took any job that didn’t ask her caste, no matter how low the wages were, and put every penny towards the costly textbooks she needed to memorize if she had any hope of attending the university. This meant that she and Naruto were barely able to scrape by each month. 

On nights when she lay awake in bed with nothing but the rumble of her hungry belly to keep her company, Sakura thought of her other best friend and what he was doing now. It had been years since Sasuke had left to travel the world and develop his potential as the sole heir of the powerful Uchiha priest clan. Outside the magical barriers around Konoha, demons roved the lands like packs of rabid wolves and life was precarious. She worried whether he was safe, and often imagined what life would be like if he were still with Naruto and her. She knew what he would say if he were here now. His condescending baritone was as clear in her mind as if he were standing before her. 

_ You could avoid all of this strife if you just claimed what is yours by birthright. _

But she wasn’t like Sasuke, who reveled in the mystery and power of the arcane. She didn’t pride herself on her abilities; she saw them as she did her rosy locks—just one more thing separating her from the normalcy that she craved. Today’s unfortunate outburst wasn’t the first of its kind, and she was sure that it wouldn’t be the last. Sasuke had once told her that magic was like a rosebush: a thing of great beauty and splendor, but if it wasn’t tended to regularly it would become a perilous bramble. 

A heavy sigh pushed its way out of her as she waited for a couple men pulling carts to pass before she could cross the street, but when she looked up and saw the little brick house nestled between newer apartments and a laundromat, a bit of relief trickled in. 

Home was her sole refuge. When the Uchiha clan was wiped out, their vast compound had been broken up and sold except for Sasuke’s house, which he had given to Naruto and Sakura before he left. The day they had both turned sixteen and reached legal adulthood, they had left the orphanage and moved in to the house together. It was a simple two-story house of sturdy brick. The shingles were patchy in some areas, but the only time that became an issue was during a particularly strong storm. 

When she opened the door there were were a few pieces of mail on the floor waiting for her. They were mostly all fliers, except for a serious, no-nonsense white envelope with the seal of Konoha City on the front, along with the words “FINAL NOTICE” in ominous red ink. Property taxes were due by the end of the month, and if she and Naruto couldn’t come up with the money, the house would be repossessed. 

Of all the times to lose her job, this was the worst.

Sakura headed straight upstairs and to her bedroom. It was fairly spacious, made even more so by the lack of furnishings. All she had was an old mattress on an even older cast iron frame Naruto had found and painted white for her, a banged-up chiffarobe, a desk and chair with uneven legs, and a trunk that had weathered the centuries. 

Wordlessly, she took off the simple red dress and changed into a t-shirt and shorts, and then fetched a needle and thread from one of the drawers of the chiffarobe so she could mend the sleeve. She was particularly fond of this dress and couldn’t stand to part with it just because it had lost a sleeve. Also, she didn’t have the money to replace it. 

She focused on each stitch, the way the needle pricked through the cotton, how the off-white thread created a zigzagging road that slowly but surely brought both pieces of cloth to union once more. This sort of repetitive, meaningless work gave her a surprising amount of calmness. It allowed her to clear her head of the turmoil, her belly of the low but constant hunger, her feet of the ache of labor. All that mattered was this needle and the path it was carving. 

It was times like this that she wondered which she was: the needle, forging through each barrier to create a path, or the thread, woefully weak and bound to heed the needle’s direction.

When she had purchased the book from the incredulous clerk at the bookstore, she had felt herself become the needle. But when Ebisu had so heartlessly cast it into the shredder and thrown her out, she had been transformed once more into the thread. 

Darning finished, she found herself staring at the trunk and its broken hasp, her mind drifting to her sole valuable held within it: the Haruno Grimoire. 

She had tried to sell it to every pawn shop in all of Konoha, but there was no merchant that would touch a spellbook. Not even the arcane shops would show interest, for it was taboo to possess another clan’s grimoire. It represented the blood and bones of an entire line of priests, and it was akin to grave robbing. 

Sakura thought it was stupid. If she wanted to sell her ancestor’s bones, then let her sell them. They were whispers and silhouettes, and those could not buy food or turn dreams to reality.

Before she was completely aware of what she was doing she opened the chest up and withdrew the tome from within. She had forgotten exactly how heavy it was.

The height of the grimoire was three of Sakura’s hand-lengths from palm to fingertips, two long, and it was as thick as her palm was wide. It was bound in an emerald shade of creamy suede that seemed to repel any and all dirt, for it looked to be brand new despite the fact that it had been around for centuries. 

The kelly green front and back were kept closed by three brass clasps that opened with soft, well-oiled _ click _s upon her touch to reveal smoothe vellum and varied but beautiful scripts that spanned for hundreds of pages in a language she could not read.

Sasuke had told her that each clan’s grimoire was written in a unique tongue that was part dead language and part code, lest it should fall into the wrong hands. The language was supposed to be taught to the children by the elders, but Sakura had been an infant when her family was killed during The Writhing. The book didn’t even use the same letters that she was accustomed to, and the linear drawings on certain pages she recognized to be sigils were just as unfathomable. 

She had no intention of becoming a priestess. However, she knew that there were many different schools of magic: elemental, summoning, time and space, healing, and even alchemy. It was possible that this book could tell her how to spin gold from thread, or some other way to use her unwanted birthright to pave the way to her dreams. She may have been born with a life sentence as a priestess according to her caste, but if she had enough money, she could pay her bills, buy her way into the university, and do as she pleased with her profession.

The sun was setting, and she put on her red dress once more before wrapping an old blanket around her and lugging the tome to her desk. 

Haruno Sakura was many things. Smart. Hard-working. Kind. Short-tempered. Polite. 

But more than anything, she was tenacious.

* * *

Naruto came home exhausted to the bone and caked in sweat and grime, but happy. He had built a stone wall for one of the wealthier merchants here in town, and as payment he had received a whole chicken and some carrots. He and Sakura would eat like kings today. He had been worried about his best friend ever since she had been let go from the hospital a couple weeks ago. She had holed herself up in her room with the grimoire, and she only emerged when Naruto all but dragged her down to the living room for a meal with him. She wasn’t even looking for a job.

Not that that bothered him. He had told her before that he would work enough for the two of them if she wanted to focus on studying to get into medical school, but she had never been the type to accept a handout of any kind. 

And he was happy that she seemed to be embracing her heritage as a priestess. Of course, he wanted her to do whatever she wanted. If she wanted to be a doctor, then he wanted her to become the best doctor Konoha had ever seen and he’d do everything in his power to help her get there. 

Though, if Naruto were perfectly honest, there was a part of him that didn’t understand why she was so opposed to becoming a priestess. Magic was awesome, as far as he was concerned. 

He watched in mixed fascination and concern as Sakura shoveled her plate of chicken and carrots into her mouth as though her life depended on it. It was a far departure from her usual prim and proper self. She had tied her long bubble-gum pink locks into a ponytail at some point, but frazzled tufts had fallen out of the bind as the days wore on. There were deep purplish dark spots beneath her eyes. Was she sleeping? He had seen a beam of light from the crack at the bottom of her door when he woke up in the night to go to the bathroom but had thought nothing of it until now.

“Sakura, how about you and me do something tomorrow?” he ventured with a sunny smile. “We could go to a park for a walk or something.”

“Nope, can’t,” she said bluntly around a mouthful of chicken. “I’m close, Naruto. I’m just about to understand the grimoire.”

Naruto reasoned, “The book’s not going anywhere, and it’s supposed to be great weather tomorrow.”

“No, I have to keep working on it while it’s all fresh in my head.”

“I’ll buy you dango.” He was getting desperate.

Sakura realized this, judging by the way she narrowed her eyes at him sharply. “We don’t have money for dango. When I can read the grimoire and cast the spells inside it, I’ll be able to conjure us enough gold to fill the house, and then we’ll go to the park—hell, we’ll _ buy _ the park—and eat all the dango we want. But until then, _ don’t get in my way.” _

Naruto was shocked into silence by the ice in her tone. It was totally different from her usual outbursts that came and went so fast they made his head spin. She had the same steely glint of determination in her eyes that Sasuke had had when he announced he was running away from the orphanage to hone his priest skills and restore the Uchiha clan’s former power, and Naruto now knew that when a person had that look, there was nothing in the entire world that could sway their mind. 

“Just…” He gave a troubled sigh, unable to hide his worry for his dear friend. “Just don’t overdo it, Sakura.”

She was already standing up from the table, wiping her mouth with a thumb. “Of course. Thanks for the meal.”

“Yeah.”

Naruto watched her all but sprint up the stairs and heard the bedroom door close as she absconded once more. Suddenly he couldn’t bring himself to finish the meal he had worked so hard for. Something prickled uneasily in his stomach, like he had swallowed a handful of sewing needles.

* * *

Twenty-one days and thirteen hours. That was how long it had taken Haruno Sakura to crack the code of the family grimoire and reveal its secrets. She couldn’t help but preen as the pictographs began to take on meaning, and she wished she could show Sasuke her progress. Even if he would never admit it to her, he would undoubtedly be pleased, and perhaps even impressed. 

There were still certain characters that she hadn’t quite parsed, but she could understand about eighty-five percent of the contents. The language the grimoire was written in didn’t just use a foreign orthography; the grammar and vocabulary were also entirely different from the tongue of the Land of Fire. There were no commonalities whatsoever. She understood that she had managed to do in a month what most scholars couldn’t do in a lifetime, and she wondered whether she had solely her intellect to thank or whether her magic had somehow been at work as well. 

Either way, it didn’t matter. She just had to read the book and figure out which spells she could use to create some wealth for Naruto and herself. 

She knew that she should take a break, get a hot shower and some hot food, if possible, and do something with the pink rat’s nest atop her head. Her single-minded pursuit of knowledge these past few weeks had caused her to neglect nearly everything else, and she was aware that it was causing Naruto deep concern. 

And yet, the grimoire and its newly unlocked secrets were a siren song that she was hearing for the first time in her life. 

“I’ll just read the first couple pages,” she promised herself aloud.

A part of her had known that saying it out loud wouldn’t be enough to bolster her resolve. Before she knew it the sun was rising and Naruto was knocking on her door, startling her out of her feverish reading. 

“What?” she called.

“I brought you breakfast,” he said through the door. “Can I come in?”

He must have taken her silence as an approval, because she heard the door open behind her. Naruto held out a couple pieces of toast to her but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the pages and just held out a hand for him to place them on.

“I did it, Naruto,” she told him. “I’ve cracked it.”

“I knew you could do it!” he crowed, jumping up and down before resting his large, warm hands on her shoulders. “Find anything cool in there? How to turn Sasuke into a chicken? Y’know, ‘cause his hair makes him look like a rooster.”

Normally his childish antics would make her giggle, but she was too intent on the grimoire for humor. “No, no animal transformations detailed here. But it looks like the Haruno clan’s magic was fairly diversified. The oldest spells at the beginning of the book look like various summoning, containment, and binding spells.”

“So you could summon chickens? Sakura, we could have chicken dinner _ every day forever.” _

She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Greasy.”

“Is there a noodle summoning spell in there? If there’s a ramen spell, I’ll marry you for life.”

She bit onto the corner of both pieces of bread, freeing her hand so she could reach up and shove back on his obnoxious forehead and push him away from her. “Gross.”

“What, the ramen?”

“No, you.”

His crestfallenness was palpable. “I brought you breakfast, and this is how you thank me?” He gave a little chuckle and ruffled her tangled hair affectionately, though, and said warmly but insistently, “I’ve taken a longer job this time. I’ll be gone for a week, and I want you to have gotten some rest by the time I’m back.”

“A week?” Sakura forgot the grimoire upon hearing this. “Why would you be gone for a week?”

He hesitated, but then admitted, “It’s outside of Konoha.”

_ “What?” _

She swirled around to face him in disbelief, and worry closely followed by anger swept through her when she saw him staring at his feet guiltily. 

“Naruto, we promised each other we wouldn’t take work outside the city if it lasted more than a day,” she said, confused. “You know how dangerous nights are out there! Why would you agree to do this? Just last week that crew of builders went missing.”

Sakura knew little of life beyond the barriers, other than that it was grueling and brief. Ever since the dome of magic had been erected around Konoha on the night of The Writhing, her city had become the safest place in the entire Land of Fire and beyond. The only people who left the protection of the magical barriers were merchants and laborers whose livelihoods depended on it. For outside the barriers, thousands upon thousands of demons thrived. Weakened by sunlight, they hid during the day and surged upon the hapless once the sun had set. There were settlements and villages where people huddled together behind locked doors at night, but it was a lonesome, fearful existence. 

There were many times that Sakura had cursed being born into her caste, but she had never once regretted being born within the safety of Konoha.

“I haven’t forgotten our promise. But property taxes are due in eight days, and if we can’t pay it the city will take back the house.”

Why did he think that she was working so hard to learn how to read this stupid book and use the magic that she hated? Did he not have any faith in her? 

“I know that you’re running yourself ragged for the both of us,” Naruto said sincerely, “but there’s no guarantee that there is a spell in there that will help us, and I refuse to risk having you on the streets. It’s a really simple job fence-building for a farmer just a couple miles from Konoha. I’ll only be outside during the day. Besides, it pays really well.”

Sakura frowned deeply. “I can’t believe you did this without asking me. Anything could happen to you out there. Listen, I’ll give up on the grimoire and I’ll get a job. Just don’t go out there.”

Her pleas obviously pained him, and he gripped her shoulders in an attempt to calm her and steel himself. “Sakura, I want you to keep going with your magic. Me doing this job will help us in the short term, but there could be something in that spellbook that could serve us well for the rest of our lives. Besides, you know if Sasuke was here he’d side with me in a heartbeat.”

“Because he’s not biased at all when it comes to magic,” Sakura huffed, though the bite of her sarcasm was softened by the ration in his words. Naruto was her oldest friend, and their shared hardships had caused them to be fiercely close. He was the kind of person who leapt headfirst into any situation without considering what would come next, and for this reason Sakura was the decision maker for both of them. Of the three, Sakura was the least impulsive and the most realistic, and Naruto deferred to her for nearly any decision, which made his choice to work beyond the city all the more startling.

Despite her upset with him breaking a promise and choosing to do this without consulting her, Sakura had to admit that it was the best way to ensure that they would be able to keep the house. Perhaps she should have tried to find another job instead of letting this grimoire take over her life, but even if she had found a place that let her work forty hours a week, it still wouldn’t have been enough to pay all of the taxes. Either way, Naruto would have been forced to make the same tough decision. 

“I’m sorry,” she told him quietly.

“What are you apologizing for? I’m happy that you’re figuring out the spells and stuff. _ I _ should be the one apologizing. I’m sorry I did this without telling you, but I knew—”

“That I’d punch you into oblivion?” she supplied.

He gave a nervous laugh. “Yes.”

Sakura pulled him into a fierce hug that he didn’t hesitate to reciprocate. Ever since they were kids Naruto had been unreasonably warm to the touch, like he had the sun within him, and she took comfort from it as it seeped into her. 

“Be careful,” she whispered. 

He promised, “I will.”

They stayed there for a few more long moments, neither wanting to pull away quite yet. But eventually it was time, and Naruto took a step back. He swore to be back soon, and then left the room quickly. Sakura listened to his footsteps down the stairs and out the door, her heart growing heavier with each. 

Her room and the entire house seemed to ring with a heavy, foreboding silence. Naruto’s boisterous energy brought his surroundings to life, and even in the best of occasions, his parting left a noticeable hole. 

What had the radio reports said about the builders last week? The crew of a dozen or so had been sent from Konoha to some town to the south, but a sudden rainstorm had washed out a road and the detour had taken too long. The trucks had been crumpled as if they were no more than empty soda cans, and the remains of the men had been sent home in a shoebox.

That the lives of twelve men could fit into a single box was more chilling than Sakura could handle.

But Naruto wasn’t like other people. He was the hardiest and most bull-headed person she knew other than Sasuke. He would come back to her in a week, whole and sound.

There was simply no other possibility.

She munched on the flavorless bread and forced herself to resume poring over each page of vellum instead of worrying, growing increasingly engrossed with each new spell. As she had said to Naruto, it seemed that the Haruno Clan had started out by specializing in summoning familiars and other creatures from different dimensions to assist them, and this had branched into binding and sealing spells when the occasional mistake was made and something dreadful was accidentally pulled into this world. 

The art of summoning was a very delicate one. If even one line of the sigil was out of place, if even one hand sign was made incorrectly, monsters more hideous and wicked than imaginable could be brought forth. These demons came from a strange plane that no human had ever travelled to, and there seemed to be two types: mindless, grotesque beasts whose sole desire was to rend flesh, and ones who could assume a human form and speak. These were, without a doubt, the most terrifying of the two because they could use their words to trick men into committing acts a thousand times worse than slaughter.

Her family had learned to summon a wide menagerie of animals: sentient dogs, cats, toads, slugs, hawks, snakes, the list went on and on. But there were other creatures that were neither human nor animal. In the language of the Haruno grimoire, they were called mononoke, yokai, and bakemono, though Sakura wasn’t sure what distinguished the three from one another. 

These were what common folk would probably call “demons” upon first glance, but they weren’t necessarily evil. Some of them were more like magical helpers, like the enchanted beings of flame that could light even the darkest night, or beings of tree branches that could allay drought and quench thirsty fields. There were also some that were clearly marked with warnings never to summon them, and Sakura figured that these beings must be demons. 

But there was one in particular that stood out to Sakura. Its name seemed to leap out of the pages at her, and though she puzzled over some of the words, the more she read the more the feeling in her gut grew that this was the solution to all of her problems. 

Ma-ou, or “The Soul of Riches.” Most other spells had an entire page of finely printed instructions and information along with the summoning sigil, but it looked like someone had spilled a bottle of ink on it, so that she could only make out a few words. “ ...over all the wicked beings of riches he reigns, ...powerful… trustworthy he is… both bound to serve…”

The “wicked beings of riches” caused a tinge of worry, but Sakura’s family had not been in the practice of summoning evil creatures. Maybe whoever had written this was against materialism or something. Besides, Sakura didn’t want to use this being’s power for evil ends. She just needed enough money to buy her way into the university, where she would then prove herself to be the capable doctor she had always longed to become, and also to make sure that Naruto could live comfortably. Once she had secured those two things, she would release the entity and send it back to where it had come from. Her days of priestesshood would come and go in less than a week, and then she could get back to becoming the average person she strived to be. 

Resolved, she closed the grimoire tenderly and listened to the three clasps click shut. It was written that the summoner and summoning grounds must be pure, so she would bathe, clean and air out her room, gather the necessary items, and then cast the spell. 

Sakura couldn’t say with certainty when she had last slept, but the excitement along with the cold shower kept her emerald eyes wide and mind sharp. It felt good to get properly clean and to put on a fresh change of clothes. Sweeping and mopping the old floorboards of her room as well as letting in some of the warm July sunshine through her windows also helped to breathe new life into her. With the breeze came the unshakeable feeling that she was on the cusp of the beginning of the life she had always dreamed of. 

No more cursing her caste and the family that had birthed her into it and died before she even had the chance to remember them. No more sacrificing her pride and taking any and every job she could find just so she and Naruto could survive. No more wondering whether she would ever become anything more than a nobody. 

As she drew the final line of the large, intricate sigil that took up the majority of her bedroom floor, she couldn’t help but grin. 

Her days of being the thread were over. Now she was the needle, and woe to the cloth that refused to yield to her designs. 

It was nightfall now, and the muggy breeze made Sakura’s skin clammy. She was in an old red dress that she only wore in the house because it was sleeveless and revealed the caste mark on her shoulder, but its simple, mid-calf length design fit her well and was perfect for the hot weather. On her desk the grimoire was open to the summoning spell, along with the tallow she had used to draw the sigil that glistened in the light like a snail’s trail. (She hadn’t even known what tallow was beforehand, and she had had to go to three different supermarkets and craft stores to locate some.) 

There was also the kitchen knife. 

Sakura took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly and evenly. She repeated this process a few times, trying to tune out the sound of cars on street and music from a bar down the road. Concentration was key, the book had said. 

“You can do this,” she whispered to herself, her eyes closed as she focused on her will and desire. “You are strong and determined, and you haven’t worked this hard to have it all end in failure here.”

She closed her eyes, took another deep breath, her mind placid and blank. Then she grabbed the knife from the table, slashed her palm open before she could chicken out, and then she brought her hands together into the sequence of seventy-seven seals. As she did so, she found the power that she could sometimes feel in her core like a puddle of warm magma in a dormant volcano, and she called it now, willed it to flow to her fingers and manifest her intent. 

“Kuchiyose no Jutsu, Maou no Hikioroshi!” 

The translucent lines of tallow glowed with such intensity that Sakura struggled to keep her eyes open, yet she dared not miss the chance to witness the coming of her salvation. She threw up her arms to shield her face from the heat, though she peered between them eagerly. 

The air began to swirl in the center of the sigil like a whirlpool but did not draw her towards it. Infinitely black shadows were spun from the churning before her and they howled like wolves in desolate midnight. The light of the sigils was being devoured by the shadows now, and her lamp flickered and died as the sounds of the black drowned out the outside world completely. There was nothing now but Sakura, the sigil, and whatever creature she had so brashly called forth. 

Something was taking shape—the shadows were melding together in the center of the pattern she had drawn on the floor—and Sakura’s gut was full of a leaden dread that made her knees shake and throat swell with tears that were too petrified to fall.

She knew deep down that this was a mistake.

She could only watch, transfixed by her fright, as the mass of midnight grew arms that were too long, tipped with fingers and claws whose sole purpose was mangling before they shrank and became regular humanoid limbs. It was tall as well, rising as high as the ceiling before it compacted to a mere six feet. 

Now the corpus of darkness was becoming lighter, taking on fleshtones that Sakura recognized as human as its anatomy became more detailed, and she was able to take in his face and its brutal beauty. His hair was untamed and the color of a quicksilver hailstorm, his face nondescriptly youthful. He could have claimed to be twenty or thirty and it wouldn’t have caused a person pause. His cheekbones were sharp enough Sakura thought she could cut herself on them, and the corners of his pale lips were pricked in the hint of a smirk. His eyes were closed, and the silvery scar that bisected his left eyelid and part of his cheek was the only thing that marred his visage. The rest of his body was entirely bare, and upon catching a glimpse of muscles sculpted by the gods she forced her gaze up, turning pink from the shock.

The spell over, the glow of the sigil faded as the remnants of the shadows faded like a wispy fog chased away by dawn. His power was an oppressive miasma that hung in the air thicker than smoke. It was as if a lead blanket were being pressed down upon Sakura, smothering her slowly. 

What had she brought into this world?

How could she send it back?

“You,” he said in a low, languid drawl, “have awoken me from quite the long slumber. I hope it’s for something worth my time.”

Sakura couldn’t speak. She didn’t even know what to say. 

When silence spanned between them for a few moments, he deigned to open his eyes, and Sakura was again stunned. One iris was as black as his shadows, and the eye with the scar was a vivid cinnabar with three black tomoe spinning about lazily. She had never seen anything like it. 

“Well, girl?” he prompted, and cast about her barren room before taking her in from head to toe. She could feel his eyes on her as if they were his hands, and she shivered. “Let me guess, looking to increase your assets?” 

The way he raised one eyebrow as he said the last word and his gaze fixed on her chest made Sakura’s cheeks grow hot. She was fully clothed, yet she put an arm over her chest to shield it from his view anyways. “I’m fine with how I look,” she snapped, surprised at herself for managing the retort. “I-I thought you were the Soul of Riches, and I summoned you here to help me become wealthy.”

“Have I been given a new title during my absence? I’m not familiar with this ‘Soul of Riches’ you speak of.”

Sakura frowned. “It was in my grimoire. Here.” She scribbled the title on a scrap of paper at her desk and held it out to him with trembling fingers. 

He squinted at her malformed symbols for a few long moments and then looked up at her with a mocking pity. “Dear, are you illiterate?”

Sakura visibly bristled. “I cracked the code of this grimoire entirely on my own, with no help at all!” she informed him heatedly. “I know what I read!”

“You should have sought help, then.” The paper turned to cinders in his palm and the letters she had written on it took shape in the air in trails of delicate red-orange embers, and he explained matter-of-factly, “What you wrote, albeit with worse penmanship than a toddler during an earthquake, is my proper title. However, you have obviously mistaken those characters for these.” Elements of the characters she had originally drawn were swapped out for others so that they changed from 魔王 to 魂宝._ “This _ would be your so-called ‘Soul of Riches.’”

Suddenly it was a struggle to swallow. Terrified of his answer, she dared to ask in barely more than a whisper, “Then what is your title?”

As the letters faded he grinned, and a little thrill of fear lanced through her to see the glint his of over-pronounced canines. “My name is Kakashi, and my title is Ma-ou—King of Demons, in your tongue. I reign over all of the realm that you mortals call Hell and command all manner of dark creatures. And now, I am but a humble servant to you who has summoned me.” 

As the meaning of his words washed over Sakura, he took a step out of the sigil and towards her. She backed away but bumped against the bed, and suddenly he was mere centimeters from her, his breath cool against her lips as he knelt down close to her. 

“But I must warn you, girl—” His whisper sent a chill through her that wasn’t entirely due to her fear. “—I exact a price for every deed, and it is not the kind that can be paid in gold and trinkets.” 


	2. Forewarned is Forearmed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my goodness I just cannot believe the response that the first chapter got. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who read, liked, followed, and reviewed. You have bolstered my confidence and sparked my muse back to life. I hope you enjoy Chapter 2, and the many, many chapters that are to come. My stories generally are 200k and up, so settle in. 
> 
> An especially big thanks to mummapaintstheblues, who has been an invaluable friend and sounding board throughout the writing of this story. 
> 
> Important Note: I have edited Chapter 1 to remove all references to automobiles. I gave it some thought and it just didn't really make sense to have them in this AU. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy this next installment. :D

* * *

Sakura prided herself on her wits. She had always been an exceptionally bright girl, not only a master of forethought, but also capable of reacting in the heat of the moment. Her quick thinking had saved Naruto and her (but mostly Naruto) on countless occasions. 

Which was why, with the King of Demons nude and staring her down like he was going to eat her, she couldn’t fathom why the _ hell _ she hadn’t thought to come up with a backup plan for when she summoned the Devil Himself. 

All she could do was push on his chest in an attempt to shove him away, but he was as immovable as a boulder. 

“The priests seem to be letting themselves go this century,” he chuckled. “Where are your subjugation spells? The ones that make my toes curl.”

She didn’t know what he was talking about, but guessed that he was trying to provoke her. “I’m not a priestess,” she bit out. “Now get away from me and get dressed. You’re making me uncomfortable.”

“That’s an unfortunate response. I thought this body would be appealing.”

Under different circumstances, he would have been correct, but this was entirely too much for one girl to process. 

“Too much to process,” Kakashi mused, and Sakura gasped. 

Had he—he hadn’t read her mind, had he? Could a demon do that? Oh God, was he reading her thoughts now? All the time? 

A whole new wave of panic swept over the girl at the possibility. It was one thing for this monster to invade her personal space—it was a thousand times worse if he were invading her mind as well. 

If he were audience to her turmoil, he gave no outward sign of it. He drew himself to his full height and took a half-step back, and in the span of the brief motion he was fully garbed in a plain outfit of black pants that were neither tight nor baggy, a black turtleneck whose collar was pulled up to conceal his nose and everything below, and he also wore a black headband at a slant that served the dual purpose of keeping his wild hair out of his face and covering the peculiar scarred eye. Now all Sakura could see of him was the unreadable black iris and his hands. 

“I trust this won’t upset your sensibilities,” he said perfunctorily. 

“Do you read minds?” she demanded.

“Only when the thoughts are loud enough that they reach my ears.”

She didn’t understand what that meant and was about to tell him to speak more plainly, but he cast about the empty little bedroom and then took a seat on the corner of her desk, crossing his arms. 

Kakashi said boredly, “Let’s get started with the indentured servitude. What do you wish of me?”

“Wait. I have a thousand questions.”

“And you may ask me a thousand questions, but for everything I do you must pay a toll.”

“What are these tolls?” There were countless aspects of this predicament that were worrying her, but this was one of the biggest ones. The word “demon” conjured dreadful images of blood sacrifice, and now that the spell was over and there was a few feet of distance between them, the burn of the cut she had inflicted upon herself flared in the forefront of her mind. She had sliced a fair bit deeper than necessary, and her blood was dripping freely onto the hardwood floors to create a small puddle. 

“You should probably do something about that,” the demon suggested, nodding to the wound. 

“I know,” she snapped, and grabbed an old t-shirt from her dresser to wrap around her palm. Applying pressure to the cluster of veins on her wrist, she raised the arm above her heart. “Now, tell me about these prices.”

“Every time you ask me to do something for you, you must do something in return for me. The scale of the request determines my price. If you asked me to open the door for you, for example, I could not demand that you climb a mountain in return. Neither of us are obligated to fulfill a task that is impossible. And fair warning: I do not bring back the dead and I do not time travel.”

The cogs of Sakura’s mind were whirring as she took in his explanation, thinking of all the loopholes that he or she could exploit. 

“What if one of us reneges and doesn’t fulfill their task?”

“Oh, surely you’re not the kind of girl to do something so low,” Kakashi said lightly, “and you may be sure that I will fulfill any request made of me, be it within my power.”

“Yeah, sure. But I don’t know anything about you, and right now you’re under no obligation to be honest with me. Tell me what happens if one of us goes against their word.”

Mirth danced in his one visible eye. “If I’m under no obligation to be honest, how will you know whether my next answer is true?”

Sakura couldn’t help but growl in annoyance. Her fear had been thoroughly swallowed up by her growing irritation. She had never met anyone who spoke in such a circular manner. 

“Answer me and I’ll decide whether I think you’re honest or not,” she commanded. 

If he thought it impertinent of a human girl to boss him around, the King of Demons did not show it on his face or in his tone. “If I should fail to fulfill a request that we have agreed upon, our bond is dissolved and I am sent back to Hell. And if you fail to repay me, our bond is dissolved—”

So all she had to do to get rid of him was to not do as he asked! She could have him make her rich, and then just not meet his payment, and then she could be rid of him— 

“—and I bring you to Hell with me when I return,” Kakashi finished.

Well, there went that loophole, then. 

Sakura next asked, “And how do we determine a price?” 

“Through traditional negotiation.”

That sounded easy enough, though with how difficult it was proving to get him to be straightforward, Sakura realized that she would have to be careful with wording. 

“And, what obligates you to complete my requests?” This query was more out of curiosity than concern. 

“Other than my scruples?”

“You said that if you don’t do as I ask, you’ll be sent back to Hell and your servitude will end. I’m sure it must be unpleasant for a king to be ripped off his throne and forced to help a human. Why wouldn’t you just dissolve the contract and leave?”

The same joking glimmer was in his eye but it seemed to have dulled, and he said simply, “‘Heavy is the head,’ and all that. A respite from rule is more welcome than you’d think.”

This was an incredible amount of information to take in, and the wooziness from blood loss wasn’t making her mind any sharper. She sat down on the bed and stared at her knees, trying to figure out what she should do next, but the wheels were just spinning and gaining no traction. 

“Let’s do a demonstration,” Kakashi suggested after a few moments. “Request that I heal your hand.”

She gave him a distrustful look. “And what will my payment be?”

“You will bring me a hot meal. Grilled fish, preferably.”

“Sorry, but I don’t have the money for that. I was trying to summon the Soul of Riches and not evil incarnate, remember?” 

“Ouch. In that case, if I provide you with the coin for the meal there will be no problem, correct?”

“And you’ll give me enough for my own meal as well?” 

His one viewable eyebrow rose, and he sounded pleasantly surprised. “You’ve caught the hang of negotiating quickly, despite being unable to read or write.”

The jab at her intellect, the one quality she held higher than any other, was enough to make her want to punch him, but she was too dizzy to stand. “I can read and write beautifully, in my native language,” she informed him acidly. “And fine, I agree to the terms.”

“As do I,” the demon said, and rose from the desk to cross the room in two strides. He outstretched a hand, and with no small amount of misgiving, Sakura reached out with her uninjured hand and shook it. 

The mattress did not give when he sat beside her, as though he were weightless. 

When he had first appeared in the sigil, his dark power had nearly choked her like a thick smog. Either he was somehow concealing his aura or Sakura was acclimating to it, because it was only now that he was an arm’s breadth away from her that she could feel a hint of the same velvet strength from before. 

It was an instinctual reaction to flinch when he took her injured hand in his. A small but ever-growing blotch of red marred the white shirt, and he unwrapped it slowly, dare she even say carefully, to reveal the gash. He held a broad palm over hers, and Sakura watched in fascination and fear as the black shadows from before appeared in the space between their hands. They pricked her skin the way powdered snow stings the face on a windy winter evening, but it was less painful than the wound itself. 

“There, like new,” he said after several seconds, and when he retracted his hand he revealed her completely healed palm. Not even a scar was left, and all of the blood that had stained her hands, the makeshift bandage, and the floor were also gone, as well as the sigil. 

“How did you do that?” she asked, absolutely amazed. 

“My shadows are an extension of my will. I will them to heal you, and they do so. I will them to clean up the room and they do so. Consider the janitorial services as a first-time customer bonus, by the way.”

It felt odd to thank a demon, but Sakura never failed to give gratitude when it was due. “Thank you. If you give me some cash, I’ll get you that food now.”

He made a fist and when he opened his hand there was one thick, oval coin of gold there. “One ryo should buy you enough meals for two months.”

Sakura took the coin from him, surprised by its weight. She had heard of ryo—they were in her history books. They had been replaced by smaller, circular coins and paper bills three hundred years ago.

“Just how long has it been since you were last summoned?” she asked him, unable to hold back her curiosity.

“We don’t exactly have a need for calendars in Hell. If it’s an antique, pawn it and show me the new money for next time.”

“Grilled fish? Any kind of fish in particular?”

“Mm...Saury would be nice.”

What an odd request. She reasoned that there was no understanding a being as foreign as the King of Demons, though, and she grabbed a scarf to use as a shawl that would hide the mark on her shoulder, along with her purse and empty wallet.

“What are you going to do in the meantime?” she asked him.

“Summon hordes of monsters and lay waste to this city,” he deadpanned, and when Sakura’s nostrils flared and her eyes went wide in alarm he waved a hand at her dismissively. “Please. Everyone knows that smiting is to be done on Thursdays, and today is Friday. I’ve got a week to plan.”

She began heatedly, “You’ll do _ no _ such thing—”

“My price for your next request is that you gain a sense of humor,” he said dryly, giving her an exasperated look as she stood fuming at the door. “Go. I won’t do anything.”

Sakura wavered, one hand on the doorknob. Leaving him unattended felt in every way like a recipe for disaster, yet bringing him into public, where he could do any manner of terrible thing and she could wind up associated with him, was just as undesirable. 

So many worries, questions, and ideas were vying for attention in her mind that she couldn’t focus on a single one. However, she understood two things right now:

She needed to learn more about him from someone other than him, and until then she needed to keep his existence a secret from everyone.

“Don’t leave this room, and don’t make a sound til I’m back,” she ordered him. 

“Then, in return—”

Sakura cut him off with an irritated huff. “Even _ that _ needs to be repaid?”

Kakashi’s lone visible eye looked vaguely displeased. “You will tell me your name.”

Out of everything he could ask of her, for some reason this took her by surprise. Come to think of it, she hadn’t introduced herself to him. The waspish retort she had planned vanished, and she felt a bit guilty for being rude. 

“Sakura,” she told him, her biting tone from earlier gone. “My name is Sakura.”

“Haruno Sakura, yes?” he confirmed. 

“How did you know my family name?”

“The Haruno clan is famous for that unique pink hair. Besides, the last person to summon me was a Haruno.” There was a tight weariness in his gaze that wasn’t there a few moments ago, as though an old injury had begun to ache, but then his coal black eye slid shut and he was completely unreadable once more. 

“Back in a while,” Sakura said quickly, sliding out and closing the door between her and the King of Demons. 

Out of his eyesight, she sagged against the wall with the weight of the situation. Her eyes slid closed and she allowed herself a shaky exhale. The panic was a slow-rising river, just about to swell over the banks and swallow up everything, but Sakura held strong against it. 

The King of Demons was in her bedroom, waiting for her return. 

But, if she played her cards right, he would help make her dreams come true. 

She took a deep breath, squeezing her hands over her eyes for a long moment. First things first: pawn the ryo, find someone who could tell her about him and demons in general, and then grab a meal as requested. 

A plan in place, her anxiety bridled, she pushed herself off the wall and headed out into the evening. 

* * *

Kakashi had been truthful when he said that the girl had awoken him from a long slumber. The dreaded, familiar tug of human magic wrapping around him like a fisherman’s trawl and dragging him out of his home and into the alien world of mortals had caused him to rouse instantaneously. 

He had been startled to see this girl, who was so similar to _ her _ and yet so different. Her brazenness was refreshing if slightly irritating, and he found it difficult not to get lost in those beryl pools that were just as inquisitive and sharp as _ hers _ had been. Was this her daughter, perhaps? The resemblance was so striking— 

Of course, that was impossible. _ She _ had been barren. 

Thinking of _ her _ caused specters to writhe in their shackles deep within him, and he quickly curbed his attention to other aspects of the human world. He could hear strange sounds outside, of music made with exotic instruments, cacophonous with a beat that rumbled like Earth itself were groaning. There were sounds he recognized as well, though: wind mussing tree leaves, the low hubbub of the humans and their lives. There were many smells he could not recall, of foods and spices no doubt from far-away lands. Yet he could also discern coming rain, wood fires, and, in the distance, flowers sweet and delicate. 

The girl, Sakura, as she had introduced herself, had proven most peculiar. Not only was she unrepentantly demanding of him even after learning his title, she seemed to be quite the novice priestess. As evidenced by her poor ability to read her own grimoire and her reluctance or inability to cast subjugating spells upon him, as well as how she made no effort to heal her hand with magic, it was clear that she knew little about her craft. In fact, she had told him that she was not a priestess, and while her caste mark and deeds evinced otherwise, she had spoken with utter conviction. 

So how was it that this girl, no doubt an outcast of her clan, had come to possess the treasured Haruno grimoire? The grimoire stayed in the hands of the eldest and most capable member of the clan, and Sakura was surely neither of those things. 

Now that she was gone, Kakashi allowed his curiosity to surface and he looked out one of the two windows in the bedroom. The street below was not cobblestones but what almost appeared to be a solid sheet of obsidian with no shine. There were many pedestrians, some of whom pulled carts and pushed barrows full of myriad goods. Flameless lightposts shone brighter than the dusk sky, and he wondered whether they were the fruit of magic, innovation, or both. 

It seemed that he had been asleep for a very long time, indeed. 

This revelation did not fill him with concern. He had willfully fallen into slumber in order to distance himself from his days on this plane, afterall. 

He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about being yanked out of sleep and to the Land of the Living, relegated to the same task of fulfilling the wishes of his summoner. Looking at the girl who was a near copy of his previous summoner made his heart feel tight, but perhaps this would provide a slight diversion from the ennui of eternity. 

Kakashi sat down on the bed and then reclined on it, eyes drifting shut. The girl would be a while—she was no doubt in search of someone who could tell her more about him. 

* * *

Pawning the coin was more difficult than Sakura had assumed it would be. It turned out that if a nineteen-year-old girl just strolled into a shop wanting to sell an antique worth thousands of dollars, she was met with great suspicion. But there was no one more bullheaded than her, and within thirty minutes of much debate and inspection, she left the shop with a wad of cash so thick she could barely cram it into the small purse.

Her fingers, hands, arms, entire body was shaking with the knowledge that she currently possessed more money than she and Naruto had earned over their combined lifetimes, and she had obtained it in less than an hour of summoning Kakashi. With this, she could pay the property tax with loads to spare. Or she could buy all of her textbooks and pay the entry test fees for the university outright. Or it was enough to completely furnish their home with pieces of furniture that Naruto hadn’t found stained and abandoned on disposal day.

Money “burning a hole in pockets” was something Sakura often heard about, but she had never been able to test the theory. She was finding it to be frighteningly true; the purse felt like it was heavy with hot coals that were just asking to be withdrawn and used. 

But she remained resilient and made her way to one of the two shops in the city that specialized in tools and ingredients for the priest caste. Only priests were allowed inside shops such as these, in order to prevent dangerous items from falling into the hands of the inexperienced. Reluctantly, she bared her shoulder to the pair of eyes painted on the wooden door, and they blinked and closed before the door opened courteously for her. She had the shawl up again before she had stepped over the threshold. 

“Oh, it’s the Haruno girl. I’ve told you before, I won’t take your grimoire no matter how much you beg.” 

Nara Shikamaru, owner of the shop, was giving her an exasperated look and she hadn’t even opened her mouth yet. This caused her to scowl at him. Before, his father had run the shop. But the wounds he had sustained during The Writhing had eventually caught up to him, and he had passed away and left the shop to his son three years ago. 

Sakura disliked the young Nara more than she had disliked his father. At least Shikaku had been willing to talk with her and listen to her pleas, even if he would ultimately refuse to buy the grimoire from her. His son made her feel like her very presence was a nuisance. 

“I’m not here to sell today,” she told him haughtily. “I’m here to buy.”

At this, the young man’s brows arched in incredulity. “You mean you’ve finally come to your senses and decided to become a priestess?”

“Yes,” she lied. “I’ve decoded the grimoire and I’m ready to learn more, so I need reference books.”

“Why the sudden change?” 

It seemed that her brief explanation hadn’t been enough to convince him. Sakura rolled her eyes and gave an irritated sigh, and then leapt into the story she had thought up while walking from the pawn shop to here. 

“I wanted to become a doctor, but I’m sick of barely scraping by. Living on one meal a day. Making poor Naruto work himself into an early grave because I’m too selfish to accept who I am. So here I am. I’m not happy about it, but I’m going to become the best goddamn priestess the Land of Fire has ever seen.”

Shikamaru took in her words, and the shop collected silence like dust. “Your whole life sounds like a drag,” he said finally.

Sakura bristled. She had just laid herself bare to him, and all he could say was that her life was miserable? The part about becoming a priestess was a lie, but the rest of it had been painfully true. It was a good thing he was on the other side of the counter, because she’d have her hands wrapped around her throat otherwise— 

“So tell me, what topics are you looking for?” Shikamaru asked her, as though he hadn’t just viciously insulted her. 

She swallowed down her fury and reminded herself that she would only have to put up with him for a little while longer. “Summoning,” she told him, “as well as binding and subjugation.”

“Of?”

“Familiars and demons.”

He gave her another furrowed brow at her last word, and he came to a still between the counter and the large library of books that constituted the western wall. 

Sakura assured him, “Obviously I’m not trying to summon them or anything. I understand that sometimes they can be summoned by mistake when summoning other things, so I thought it best to prepare myself just in case.” 

“Forewarned is forearmed,” he conceded after a pensive pause, and then beckoned for her to come stand beside him at the wall of bookshelves that were as high as the ceiling. 

His shadow stretched up to pluck a couple books from the top and dropped them into her arms. Sakura caught them as she marvelled at the thin rope-like shadow that reminded her of Kakashi’s shadows. During her various visits to the shop, she had seen the Nara Clan use their signature shadows, but only to move physical objects here and there. She wondered whether they were capable of healing and vanishing things like the demon’s shadows were, but she had the distinct feeling that Shikamaru wouldn’t entertain her curiosity. 

The young man went about selecting more tomes for her. “Here. These two volumes are the standard for summoning magics. And this one by Tomisawa is regarded as the most complete bestiary of familiars. These two are for binding, and this one is on subjugation. Subjugation is quite delicate magic, though, so you shouldn’t attempt it for awhile. And, lastly…” 

His shadows pulled one more book from the shelf: a thick, dusty tome of black leather with gold coating on the page edges. Sakura sagged under the weight of all the knowledge, and the dust was making her nose itch. “This is the collection of known demons. You won’t find sigils in here, though, since the government issued that edict after The Writhing that all sigils be destroyed. This is just an encyclopedia of sorts.”

“Got it. How much do I owe you for these?”

“Mmm…” His shadows took all of the books from her once more and rested them in a neat pile on the counter beside the register. Sakura followed the man there. “With tax, it comes to $5,623.71.”

The total hit her like a punch and she physically reeled back in shock. “Where the hell is my first time customer discount?” she demanded.

“That was included. Didn’t you notice I gave you a generous 15% discount?” 

“Didn’t _ you _ notice that you’re committing _ highway robbery?” _ she shot back, even as she did the mental math and realized that he was correct. She had never paid so much for anything in her entire life, and this would deplete more than a quarter of the money she had gotten from the ryo.

Shikamaru fixed her with a hard, no-nonsense stare and stated factually, “These books are the culmination of centuries of experimentation and sacrifice. Countless priests and priestesses died to make these discoveries and leave them behind for the next generation. Besides, you’re asking for books on advanced and dangerous spell theory. Frankly, if you had a last name other than Haruno, I wouldn’t be selling them to a novice like you.”

“What does my name have to do with it?” For the moment, her outrage at the price was overshadowed by her bewilderment. 

“The Haruno Clan was one of the most renowned priest clans before The Writhing, and one of their main specialties was summoning. There’s little chance that you didn’t inherit their skills.”

How had she never known this information until now? No one, not even Sasuke, who had been adamant that she abandon her dreams of becoming a doctor and focus on her magic, had told her anything about her clan. She had assumed that the Haruno Clan was a bunch of nobodies. 

“Uchiha Sasuke never told me anything like that,” Sakura told him challengingly.

Shikamaru looked vaguely surprised for a moment before a dark look fell over his features. “He likely had his reasons.” Before Sakura could press him for more information he took on a put-upon frown. “Now, are you going to pay or am I going to have to put these books back on the shelves?”

“You’re robbing me blind, but yeah, I’ll take them,” she said bitterly, and withdrew a handful of cash to cover the total. 

Shikamaru watched as she counted out fifty-seven hundred-dollar bills one after another, but stayed silent. She found it odd that he wasn’t asking her where she had suddenly found this amount of cash, as she had tried to sell her grimoire here at least eight times over the years. He knew that she was a dirt-poor orphan with nothing to her name but that stupid spellbook. 

Her nervousness mounting, Sakura felt compelled to give him the lie she had thought up. “Naruto’s last odd job was to till this field, and when he was—”

“Nope, don’t wanna hear it,” Shikamaru interrupted her loudly. “When I see huge amounts of cash like this, I don’t wanna know anything. Always leads to something troublesome.”

His personality was spikier than that ridiculous ponytail of his. Sakura wordlessly finished counting and double-counting, and watched carefully as he thumbed through the bills once. He handed her the change, which she put into her purse, and his shadows wrapped the books in two neat bundles of brown paper tied with twine. She slipped the two stacks into a backpack she had just purchased for this very purpose and thanked him perfunctorily to which he nodded and gave a "Thanks for your business" that sounded threadbare from overuse.

She was just about to open the door when he spoke up suddenly.

"No one's tilling fields in July, so you better change that story of yours."

Despite the bored tone of his voice, an icy chill washed over her. Hastily she threw open the door and dashed out without casting him a backward glance. 

She had made what could have been a costly mistake. If anyone learned that she had gained her wealth from a demon, one that she had willfully (albeit mistakenly) summoned, she would be sentenced to death. She needed to make sure that her story was airtight. 

As she rushed to put as much distance between the magic shop and herself as possible, Sakura wondered at the dour man. They were the same age, she thought, and he had never extended her any kindness until today. Every time she had entered that shop to try to pawn off that grimoire, he had always looked at her with scorn. 

Though she didn't understand Shikamaru's motivations, it appeared as though she had gained an ally in him today.


	3. Of Lessons and Promises

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so long since I updated. Hope you guys enjoy the next installment.

* * *

Sakura hastened to the nearest restaurant she could find, uneasy about leaving the demon alone any longer than absolutely necessary. 

Kakashi had said that he wanted saury, and she was in luck that this restaurant had a grilled saury bento box with rice and assorted vegetables. She grabbed one for him and a tempura bento with extra squash tempura for herself, and then walked back with her spoils in tow. The thought of returning to her room where the King of Demons was waiting was daunting to say the least, and she could only hope that he hadn’t done anything evil while she was out. 

On the plus side, she was armed with knowledge now. Even the scrumptious scents of the hot meals failed to pique her interest as much as the books. However, this keen appetite of hers shouldn’t be mistaken for an interest in magic. Her sole desire was to find a way to make the demon make her rich as quickly as possible, and then cast him back to Hell just as quickly and move on with her life. 

She felt more than a small amount of relief upon returning home and finding nothing out of place. There was no blood dripping down the walls or bodies of the innocent. Up the stairs she stepped, and she would be lying if she said the sight of her door and the knowledge of what lay beyond it didn’t fill her with trepidation. But what was done was done. The King of Demons was here now, and while he wasn’t pleasant, it was clear that he wasn’t a blood-frenzied fiend like demons were depicted. 

Her doorknob turned and the door swung open just before she could touch it, and she squeaked and jumped back in fright. Kakashi lay sprawled on her bed as if he owned it, obviously amused with her startle. 

“Awfully skittish,” he commented. 

“Can you blame me, Your Majesty?” Embarrassed that such a small thing had scared her and that he had been witness to it, her retort sounded snippier than she had perhaps intended. 

“I suppose not, though you should probably work on training your sixth sense up so these things don’t catch you off guard.” 

“My what?” Sakura set the paper bag of takeaway on her desk and then shrugged off the backpack.

When she turned to face him with his bento and chopsticks, Kakashi was sitting cross-legged on her bed and he had tugged down the collar of the turtleneck. She couldn’t help but notice a little freckle at the corner of his mouth that she was _ certain _ hadn’t been there earlier. 

“Thanks,” he said, taking the warm container from her. He regarded the cardboard and wooden chopsticks with interest for a couple moments before opening it up and taking a bite of the grilled fish, and his one visible eye closed in unmistakable bliss. 

“Been a while since you’ve last eaten?” she asked.

He gave her a soft smile. “A long while.”

Sakura began eating too, savoring each bite of the tempura. It was one of her favorite dishes, but eating out was a luxury. The last time they had gone to a restaurant like this had been Naruto’s birthday. 

“So, you really don’t know what the sixth sense is?” Kakashi asked. 

“Um...is that like where you see ghosts and stuff?” 

The demon stopped chewing and gave her a genuinely surprised look. “You don’t know anything about your craft, do you?”

Defensively, Sakura reminded him, “I told you I’m not a priestess.”

“You are a Haruno. You possess the grimoire. You summoned me, which is something that even some of the most seasoned priests couldn’t manage,” he reasoned. “You can’t be anything other than a priestess.”

“So even demons believe in castes,” she said bitterly. “Why do I have to be a priestess? Just because I have this stupid mark on my arm? Because parents and ancestors I can’t even remember were priests before me? It’s a bullshit system, and I summoned you here because I’m going to break out of it. You’re going to help me get rich, and then I’m going to use that wealth to go to university and become a doctor.”

The King of Demons was silent for a moment, mulling over her words. Then he asked quietly, “Do you mean to say that you are the last of your line?”

“Yes. I am the last Haruno. All of my clan was killed during The Writhing when I was still an infant. Or so I’m told.”

“The Wri—? Ah.” It was a sound heavy with realization, and Sakura ignored it, chewing viciously on her tempura and rice instead. Presently, he asked, “If you want to become a doctor, why have you purchased so many books on spells?”

“Because you are a dangerous monster, and I’d be an idiot not to educate myself about you.”

“That’s reasonable,” he conceded. “But you should really wait to use any of the subjugation spells until you’ve learned more of the basics. They have a chance of misbehaving or rebounding on the caster.”

Sakura shot him a suspicious look. “What if you’re just telling me that so you’re free for longer?”

“Mm, I could be. But last time I was summoned, no known subjugation was enough to tame my power. So I’m really giving you this advice out of the goodness of my heart.”

She gave a derisive snort. “What do demons know of magic?”

“This one knows a fair deal. Demons have their own type of magic that isn’t dissimilar from the humans’.”

Sakura frowned as she thought over his words. The problem with the Haruno grimoire was that it was like an advanced cookbook: it was full of difficult recipes, but it didn’t have an appendix to tell her how to do the simple things, like broiling or braising. It had been written with the assumption that all of the foundational knowledge would be passed down orally from generation to generation. The grimoire itself only contained spells that the Haruno Clan had developed, and most of them were esoteric. In fact, because nearly all crafts were determined by caste, it was a given that most knowledge was passed down orally, and this was why textbooks and education were so expensive. They were considered supplemental. 

Though she didn’t want to agree with the demon, she remembered that Shikamaru had also warned her against the subjugation spells. But who could she ask for help with learning the basics? She had no way of contacting Sasuke and no guarantee of when he would be back. Shikamaru would certainly refuse, and she was scared to ask another priest for help in case they found out that she had summoned a demon. 

“So, to summarize,” Kakashi said presently, snapping her out of her deep qualms, “you denounce magic and priestesshood, but want to take advantage of it long enough to become rich. And once you have your wealth, you will banish me, attend school like a regular human to become a doctor, and live out your life in mediocrity.” 

“I object to your wording, but I guess.”

He ignored her to continue in a factual manner, “You’re obviously unaware of it, but you have an incredible well of potential, as evidenced by how you summoned me so effortlessly. If you honed your skills, you would be able to generate wealth independent of me, and you would have financial security for the rest of your life. Ask me to teach you and I will do so.”

“...For a fee,” she said darkly. The benefits of this deal were much too one-sided, and Sakura was waiting for the demon to drop the other foot. 

“Of course.” His tone was light, and there was a glimmer in his eye, but he did not smile. 

“Say that I were to ask you to teach me. What would you teach me? And what would you charge?”

She wasn’t agreeing to it. But she wanted to have all the information before she dismissed his offer either. 

“I suppose the first thing would be to practice channeling your magic. Learn how to call it forth in measured amounts.”

“And then?”

“Forgive me for not having a curriculum fully thought out,” he said with a mock bow of his head. “But believe it or not, I have some experience in these matters.” 

“You mean that you taught a priest magic?”

“Yes, a very long time ago.”

Sakura frowned. She needed more time to fully consider this proposition. “I’ll think about it,” she said finally, and took their empty containers down to the garbage below. When she came back to her room, she found the demon sprawled on her bed once more, staring up at the ceiling with a blank, unreadable expression. The fact that he didn’t blink made it all the more unsettling to her, and she mentally shook herself and took out the demon bestiary. 

“Oh, the who’s who of Hell,” Kakashi commented boredly, and Sakura swirled around and squealed in alarm to find him suddenly a couple inches behind her, leaning down and hovering over her shoulder to read the pages. 

“Get away from me!” she shouted. “You can’t just pop up like that!”

The demon’s visible brow shot up and he took a step back, palms up in apology. “First thing to add to your curriculum will be awareness,” he decided. 

_ “If _ I take you up on it,” she reminded him. 

“Yes, ‘if.’ But it would be unwise of you not to.”

“Shut up. I’m trying to read.” Sakura hunched her shoulders, gripping the black book tightly, as though she’d be able to sink into the pages and escape him if she willed it hard enough. 

“Is that a request? Because we’ll need to negotiate a payment—” 

Even when she was fully rested and in the best of moods, Sakura had always been quick to anger. Now, when she was grappling with the fact that she had a demon in her room that she could not get rid of, while her worry for Naruto was at a constant simmer in the back of her mind, _ and _ she had failed to get a full night’s sleep in weeks, she was at breaking point. Viciously she slammed the book upon the desk and swirled to face him, and completely unbidden, her magic freed itself from its binds and manifested.

Vines thick as rope suddenly sprouted out of the floorboards and wrapped their tendrils around Kakashi’s legs, climbing their way up his body and constricting him so tightly she was certain his bones would break if he were a human. They bound his arms to his torso and then stopped once they were constricting his throat, digging deeply into his flesh.

Sakura was horrified at herself, at this wicked gift she had never wanted, and she covered her mouth in shock. Just as she didn’t know how to create the vines, she didn’t know how to get rid of them either. 

But despite being crushed, the King of Demons did not share her horror. On the contrary, his brief surprise turned into an expression that could have been impressed. His body glowed with a black light for a moment, and the vines were eaten away as if by acid until there was no trace of them. 

“Well,” he said lightly, “now I know what happens if I annoy you too much.”

She could find no humor in this situation. Before she was even fully aware of it, tears were filling her eyes and spilling down her cheeks. 

“There’s no need to get upset,” the demon said, more taken aback by her emotional outburst than her magical one. “They were fine vines, but no priest has ever been able to bind me. Don’t feel bad.”

He had completely missed the point. Voice trembling, she yelled, “If I had done that to a human, it could have killed them!”

The moment the words were out of her mouth, the weight of them sank in fully and she began to sob with abandon. This was her greatest fear—that one day she would lose control of her magic and it would harm someone, and if Kakashi had been a mere man, he would have been dead. 

Kakashi watched the human, likely lost for words. Her cries filled the silent room for several minutes, until she got out the majority of the fear and self-loathing that had been trapped within her, and she was left sniffling and wiping her nose with a tissue. 

When he spoke next, his voice was soft and it held none of the sarcasm or teasing from before. “If your power scares you, you need to tame it. I am willing to help you with this, not because I have ulterior motives, but because I am grateful that you brought me to this world once more. Allow me to teach you, to give you the tools you need to seize control of yourself.”

“I—I…” Sakura took a shuddering breath. She was so incredibly _ tired. _ It had been so long since she had slept, and the unbelievable past twenty-four hours had simply been too much for her to process. “I need time.”

“You need rest.”

He was right. Not even caring that she was still in her bra and dress, or that there was a demon in her room staring at her, she got into bed and under the thin summer blanket. 

“Don’t do anything evil,” she murmured, but she was asleep before she could hear his reply.

* * *

It was one of those sleeps that was so deep Sakura woke up feeling like she had been pummeled. She was groggy, disoriented, and for a second she wasn’t even sure that she was in her own bed. The sun was streaming in vehemently, and she threw a forearm over her eyes and groaned. 

“I didn’t know that humans were capable of slumbering for so long.”

The rumbling baritone awakened some primal, instinctual part of her that caused her eyes to shoot wide open and the haze of drowsiness to vanish in a flash. The demon sat backwards on her desk chair, arms hooked over the back of it and chin resting lazily upon them. He was still covered nearly head to toe except for the one gray eye, which took in her disheveled appearance boredly. 

Sakura sat upright, tugging her dress back into place to hide her thighs and desperately attempting to smoothe out her frazzled pink locks. 

“What did you do while I was asleep?” she demanded of him immediately. 

“That’s rather accusatory,” he objected, looking no more emotional than before.

“You’re not answering my question.”

He gave a little sigh. “You are perhaps the least amusing Haruno to exist. All I did was read your books and look out the window, if you must know. Oh, and thought up a curriculum for you.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

When she leveled him with her most withering look for several long moments and he didn’t cave, Sakura figured she had no choice but to believe him. She grabbed a clean outfit and took a quick, brisk shower before wrestling her long pink locks into something slightly more becoming. The dates on the little pile of mail on the doormat told her that she had been asleep for two solid days. 

So Naruto would be back in four more days… 

This thought brought her joy, until she immediately began to wonder how he was doing and whether he was safe out there. 

“So this is the rest of your house. It’s...minimalist.”

Sakura looked up from the bill in her hands and gave a rather undignified yelp of surprise to find the demon’s disembodied head poking out of her ceiling, surveying her rather barren living room dispassionately. His wild hairstyle looked quite natural when he was suspended upside-down like he was.

“Where the hell is the rest of you?” 

“Connected to my head. Some demons can float through things.”

“Cool,” Sakura said in a fashion that made it clear she thought otherwise. “Move around like a regular person.”

Cocking his head at her like a dog who had been given an unfamiliar command, he said simply, “I’m not a person. And I’m not regular.”

The stress and irritation that had cooled to a low simmer during her sleep was suddenly at a rolling boil once more. Belatedly she realized that she had balled her hands into fists and crumpled a couple pieces of mail in doing so. Sakura tried to iron them out inconspicuously, not wanting him to notice that his antics were getting to her. 

Kakashi floated to the floor as if he weighed no more than a dust mote. He made no sound when he walked across the threadbare carpets and into the kitchen, where he inspected the refrigerator with interest. Sakura ignored him, forcing herself to focus on the bills in her hands instead. 

...Though the dollar signs inevitably brought her attention back to the demon, who was sniffing at a carton of milk, his one visible eye scrunched shut in distress.

“It’s been awhile, but I’m fairly certain that milk isn’t supposed to smell like this.”

“It’s fine. Put it back.”

He sloshed it around in the carton. “It’s got chunks.”

“Ugh, Naruto must have left the carton open. He’s always doing that,” she muttered, and crossed the room to him so she could take it and pour it down the sink, pinching her nose shut with her other hand to avoid the stench. 

Once the cleanup was complete, she looked up to Kakashi, who was now scrutinizing her oven as though it were an alien life form. 

“I need your help again,” she said, the words sticking to the inside of her mouth like peanut butter. 

“Oh?” He stopped studying her appliances and leaned back against the counter. “What do you have in mind?”

She bartered with him, taking a wad of the cash he magically procured in exchange for a meal and, peculiarly, books. It had never occurred to her that his savage kind could take interest in literature, and she went to the city hall to pay her taxes and other bills that had been piling up in a numb state of disbelief. She could hardly believe that it was her own hand passing the fat envelope to the clerk, paying off their taxes without an ounce of effort. There was a part of her that felt deeply guilty about it as well, because it was one thing to use her magic to create something and profit from its sales, but if anyone learned that her wealth had come from a demon that she had summoned, she would be sentenced to death in less than five minutes. 

The clerk didn’t question her, thankfully, and Sakura slipped out of the city hall as quickly as possible. Even though she knew that no one cared enough to suspect her, she couldn’t help but feel that all eyes were on her, as if Kakashi’s presence had marked her as a criminal for all to see. 

Shaking herself, she forced herself to stop thinking such nonsense. All she had to do was focus on learning how to use her magic so she could send him away before anyone learned of his existence. 

She came back home a couple hours later laden down with grocery bags. She couldn’t recall a time that their kitchen had been so full, or so _ green. _ Usually they bought what was cheapest, and since almost all plants were grown outside of the city, vegetables and fruits were costly. Sakura treated herself to an apple, leaning back against the counter and closing her eyes in bliss. Though she had an undeniably large sweet tooth, when it came to apples she preferred green ones and their refreshing tartness. The burst of flavor along with each satisfying _ crunch _ helped to ground her and focus on something other than the madness her life had become. 

The reprieve was short-lived, however, because the simmering dread she had grown accustomed to returned when she threw away the apple core and her eyes fell upon the remaining two shopping bags, whose contents were for the demon in her room. 

_ He’s going to start teaching you today, _ she reminded herself firmly. _ The sooner you learn how to use your magic, the sooner you can be rid of him. _

This thought was more encouraging than that of _ You have a demon in your bedroom, which is an offense punishable by death, _ so she repeated it to herself a few more times as she took the two sacks up to her room. 

The King of Demons appeared to be napping on her bed, but the moment her toes crossed the threshold his one visible eye shot open to take her and her spoils in. 

She put the bags on the bed beside him and sat at her desk, eager to put distance between herself and the monster, and he sat up and began taking the meal and books out of the sacks with interest. 

“You got me quite an array of genres,” he noted, poring over the spines. 

“Well, it’s hard for a human to guess what a demon would like to read,” said Sakura, unsure of how to reply. 

He hummed absently, “I imagine it is,” and then began eating the stir fry dish she had picked out for him. 

The girl found herself stealing glances at him as he became intent on his meal. He had pulled down the black mask, and Sakura took in his smoothe jawline along with flashes of white teeth that were the same as any human’s except for the pronounced canines. 

She had never seen a living demon with her own eyes until now, but the photos and accounts of them made it sound like they were horrific, beastly amalgamations of wickedness. And the higher demons that could take human form only did so to hide their ghastly true appearances so as to trick unwitting humans. Though her time had been brief with him so far, he had yet to do anything even remotely demonic or evil. The worst thing he did was torment her with his annoying comments. 

Then again, it had only been a few days since she had summoned him, and she had spent two of those asleep. She couldn’t afford to think of him as anything other than a monster. 

No sooner had he finished the meal than he had pulled the mask back up, concealing everything but one coal black eye. He leaned back against the wall and settled into reading one of the books immediately.

Sakura watched in mounting disbelief as he turned one page after another. Was he going back on the bargain they had made this morning? He gave her money, and she gave him a meal. She gave him a book, and he was to give her a magic lesson. She had given him not one but _ eight _ books just now, with the understanding that he would then offer her just as many lessons. Yet with the way he was so engrossed in the book, it was growing clearer by the minute that he had no intention of teaching her as promised. 

Predictably, this caused her simmering irritation to build and billow like ocean waves harried by a squall, and when she gripped the back of the desk chair so hard it creaked in protest, Kakashi finally deigned to speak to her.

“Ah, yes. Your lesson.” 

He didn’t even look up from the page, not even to flick a glance her way, and he had spoken as though her tutelage was an afterthought he had all but forgotten. This did nothing to mollify Sakura, and her glower intensified to levels that could scorch the earth. 

“Your first magic lesson,” he continued just as dispassionately as before, turning another page, “is to become aware of your power.”

“That’s—of all the idiotic things! Of course I’m aware of my magic,” sputtered the girl. “The stupid mark on my shoulder won’t let me forget about it!”

The demon still wasn’t taking his eyes off the book. “You misunderstand me. Can you feel it coursing through your veins like rapids? Can you feel it pooling in your feet and hands when you lose your temper like you’re about to now? You are aware that you have magic, but you are not _ aware _ of it.”

The tirade she was about to unleash on him died on her lips. Hastily she looked down at her hands and feet, as if she would be able to see her magic glowing there, but all she saw was pale skin and clean nails. She could feel the blood pounding in her head with her anger, but no sensations that could be likened to a rapid. She had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. 

She demanded, “How can you teach me when you’re reading a book?” 

“Unlike you pitiable humans, demons can easily split their focus. Now, look within yourself and seek out your magic.”

After a few moments of silence in which Sakura waited for him to give her more instruction, she realized that he wasn’t going to say more. So she had to figure it out on her own. Well, she had figured out the grimoire on her own, hadn’t she? She would do this too, if only to spite him. 

With an angry huff she scrunched her eyes shut and searched for her magic in the darkness, but there was no glimmer to guide her to it. She could feel the sticky summer air on her arms and the beading sweat on her brow, and she could hear the sound of Kakashi turning another page, along with the low hum of people walking the streets and the clatter of wooden cart wheels beyond the window. 

None of these things were what she was looking for. 

Her frustration mounting, Sakura doubled down and tried again. She had been the best student at the orphanage, and her intellect had always been her greatest pride. The thought of being unable to do something, and of showing her ineptitude to this demon of all people, stung so much it felt like acid in her throat. 

“You keep it up and you’re going to ruin the floorboards with those vines again.” 

Kakashi’s measured baritone caused her to open her eyes and look around the room for signs of destruction, but everything was just as it had been a few minutes ago. She shot him a glare so vicious he had to feel it like flames licking at him, but it still wasn’t enough to make him look up at her. 

“All you’re doing is closing your eyes,” he pointed out. “You need to block out anything that can distract you.”

“So, like meditation?”

“Yes.”

“Then say that from the start,” she bit out. He looked just as unmoved as before, and Sakura rolled her eyes as she threw her long pink hair into a ponytail and rose to her feet. “Get off my bed.” 

He rose to his feet obediently, too absorbed in the book to be a contrary nuisance as usual, and they switched places so that he was seated backwards in the chair and she was cross-legged in the middle of her bed. She had seen people meditate before, but had always thought it was pointless. Why clear your mind of everything when you could be focusing on a problem and fixing it? 

Nevertheless, she attempted to do as he had said. She took a few deep breaths, willed her temper to cool, and closed her eyes once again. Before she had been restless in the dark, but now she made a conscious effort to relax. It was true that she was in a hurry to tame her magic and be rid of Kakashi, but she had learned by watching Naruto her entire life that running around brashly led to nothing but a lot of trouble. Here she would take her time and carefully seek. 

The longer she sat in the darkness of her mind, the less she could feel the discomfort of the muggy summer heat. The traffic on the road below faded to a low background hum until finally it was no more, and even the dry scratch of pages being turned by the King of Demons in the same room faded away. She wasn’t sure how long it had taken because time was of no consequence here, but at long last Sakura had managed to forget the outside world and all of its distractions. 

The darkness that stretched out before her no longer felt like the bottom of the sea pressing in on and suffocating her; now it was a great cavern that begged to be explored. Sakura’s mind wandered its passages one after another, never getting mad or impatient when she came to a dead end and had to retrace her steps. She was driven by a deep and steadying calm that she had never felt before today. 

She couldn’t say how many miles she had traipsed or how deep into the great cavern she had descended when she suddenly felt something warm, as if a campfire were glowing in the distance. The closer she came to it the hotter it became, until it was as if she were standing on the rim of a volcano and looking down into the caldera where a sea of frothing magma churned. It was awesome in its intensity, and Sakura gave a soft gasp to behold it.

_ “You’ve found it.” _

Kakashi’s voice was the first sound she had heard in ages, and the suddenness of it caused Sakura’s concentration to shatter. She opened her eyes and jerked back with a gasp, bumping her head against the wall behind her. 

“Why’d you have to scare me like that?” she muttered. 

The demon stood before her hunched over so he was at eye level with her, looking intrigued as she clutched the back of her head and struggled to reorient herself. “I didn’t mean to. You were so deep in thought anyways that anything I did would have startled you.”

As the pain died down to tenderness Sakura realized that the room was no longer illuminated by sunlight but by the ceiling light, and the heat had levelled off somewhat. 

“How long was I…?”

“About ten hours,” he informed her lightly, “which is exceptionally fast.”

“There’s no way! It didn’t feel like any time had passed at all,” she objected. But the clock on the wall told her it was nearing 1 a.m., and a glance out the window showed that there were no people on the streets as per city-wide midnight curfew. She gave a confused sigh but relented. “So I found my magic. What’s next?”

“Dinner, I would imagine. Aren’t you hungry?”

As if her stomach had been listening in, it growled not a moment after he had spoken. She gave it a frown for betraying her and then looked up to Kakashi, who had risen to his full height and slipped a hand into his pocket relaxedly. “Fine. Dinner, and then the next lesson.”

His eye closed into what Sakura knew to be a crinkle-eyed smile even though she couldn’t actually see his mouth, and for a brief second she was taken aback by just how happy and warm the look he gave her was. It was like the sun had decided to poke out from a rain cloud just for her. 

_ What a weird way to feel about a demon’s smile, _ she mused, and then swiftly went downstairs to make dinner for the two of them. 

* * *

Sakura wasn’t much of a cook. Having grown up in an orphanage where every meal was ladled out assembly line style and then having no budget for anything other than the cheapest instant noodles and canned goods had stunted her culinary growth. She could boil spaghetti noodles and pour sauce over them, though, and that was akin to a five-course meal in terms of fanciness in her books. 

She swirled noodles onto her fork hastily as she assaulted the demon with questions. 

“So that power I felt, that was my magic. It felt like there was a _ lot _ of it. How much does the average priest have?”

“Hmm.” He had already cleared his plate in a show of inhuman speed and was reading the same book as before, and judging by the page he had open, he was re-reading it. “It’s not exactly something that can be measured by weight or size. But the Haruno clan has exceptional magic reserves, and amongst them yours is impressive.”

Something about this information caused pride to swell up within her. “I know you know about the Haruno Clan, but what about others? What am I like compared to them? Like the Nara or Hyuga or Uchiha?”

At the word “Uchiha,” the demon looked up from his book as though he had heard a gunshot. It was the first time she had been able to get him to tear his eyes away from the pages. 

In the next second his expression relaxed and he resumed reading. The look of shock had come and gone so quickly that Sakura wondered whether she had imagined it. 

“Magic doesn’t equate to raw power,” he told her. “The Harunos specialize in summoning, and they are arguably the best at it, though they lack in offensive magic. The Uchihas are the opposite.”

“So the Haruno Clan was as powerful as the Uchiha, in a way?”

The demon’s brow furrowed and he looked unamused. “It’s not really something that can be quantified and compared, but I suppose.”

_ Just wait until Sasuke hears about this! _She was downright giddy to learn that she had something to lord over Mister “I come from the most powerful clan ever so worship the ground I walk upon” whenever she saw him next. 

She didn’t know when Sasuke would return to Konoha; she only knew that he had promised to come back when he was strong, and that he kept every promise he made without exception. Even though it had been seven years since she had last seen him, Sakura had every confidence that he was alive and well. He was no thread—he was a needle forged in fire. 

Kakashi’s brow was still knit in irritation and he hadn’t turned a page. It was the first time she had seen him become upset over anything, and she wondered what could have triggered it. Then she remembered the way he had looked up from his book upon hearing Sasuke’s last name. 

“Do you not like the Uchihas?” she ventured. 

“I wouldn’t invite one to dinner,” he joked, but his one visible eye held no mirth, and he said nothing more on the subject. 

Sakura returned to eating her meal in a much more subdued fashion, the clink of her fork against the plate ringing out in the awkward silence. Given the Uchiha Clan’s history, it was only natural that the demon before her had no love lost for them. Her cheeks grew warm and she felt stupid for asking the question. 

“May I ask you something?” 

The demon’s sudden inquiry made her look up from her pasta and to him. The dark expression was gone and he was back to being just as laid back as usual. 

“Sure.”

“Why do you and this Naruto sleep in separate rooms?”

Bewildered, Sakura said slowly, “Because sharing a room would be...gross?”

“So you’re not…?” His eyebrow rose in innuendo.

It finally dawned on her what he was getting at and she couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh God, no! I’m gonna lose this spaghetti if you make me imagine that again. He’s my best friend. My brother. He and Sasuke both are. But Sasuke left Konoha some time ago and we don’t know when he’ll be back.”

“And Naruto? Where is he?” Kakashi asked, and after she explained the job he had taken and that he would be back in a few more days, he continued his line of questioning. “Do you intend to tell him about me?”

“There are no secrets between Naruto and me,” she informed him stolidly. “He knew that I decided to use my magic to improve our situation, so I’m going to tell him about you the moment he gets back.”

Kakashi gave a pensive “hm.” “I thought that the punishment for summoning a demon was death. And anyone who aided and abetted received the same. Are you so close that you would risk his life with the knowledge of my presence?”

This caused Sakura great pause. Of course she had realized the moment she had heard Kakashi’s title that she would be sentenced to the gallows if he were discovered. However, she had been so focused on herself that she had failed to consider what would happen to Naruto, someone she cared about far more than herself. 

She had no doubt that Naruto would be shocked and alarmed to learn the King of Demons was under their roof, but knew that he would never in a million years report her to the authorities. In that aspect at least, Sakura was unconcerned. 

But magic was a frightful and unpredictable thing at times, particularly for priestesses like her who were still learning how to control it. If an accident like a magical explosion occurred, authorities would be summoned and there would be an investigation, and if the slightest evidence of the presence of a demon was found, she could not vouch for her safety or Naruto’s. 

Suddenly she was no longer hungry. Sakura rose to her feet, put the leftovers into a container in the fridge, and headed back up to her room. The demon seemed not to notice and continued reading. 

So when she opened her bedroom door and found him lying on her bed looking up at her, she gave a squeak and all but leapt in surprise. 

Sakura sputtered, “How did you—? When—?” 

“We really must work on your awareness,” he tutted. “Some demons are very fast. Faster than the human eye can track.” 

Unbidden, the memory of how he had looked before he assumed a human form flashed through her mind. An eight-foot tall shadow with long fingers and claws that could no doubt tear her apart as if she were paper. 

He could end her life before she even knew it was over. 

“You’re frightened,” he acknowledged calmly, and he put down his book to show his undivided attention. “It’s an instinctual reaction. But you needn’t fear; I won’t harm you.”

All the color had drained from Sakura’s face and she stood in the doorway on legs that felt strangely numb. “Demons lie and mislead humans. I have no way of knowing that you’ll keep that promise.”

“Let’s make a deal, then.” His dark eye surveyed her terrified countenance calmly. “I will not let you come to harm, and in exchange, you will buy me the rest of this book series.”

She couldn’t believe what he had just said. “Are you joking?” 

“Of course not.”

“My life is worth…” She leaned closer to read the title on the spine, and both her expression and tone turned acidic. “...a series of_ romance novels?” _

“It’s much more than cheap romance,” he assured her earnestly. 

Incredible. Just a moment ago she had been petrified of him, and now she wanted to strangle him. Her hands balled into fists at her side, she just glared at him.

The King of Demons was immune to her rage, though, and prompted her after a few moments of blazing quiet, “Well? It’s a very reasonable bargain no matter how you look at it.”

It galled her to willingly admit her existence was as meaningful as some harlequin romance, but he was a demon and he probably thought human life was just as significant as paper. Begrudgingly, she reached out to take his outstretched hand and seal the deal. 

His hand was hot—hotter than Naruto’s, even—and the warmth seeped in through her cold fingers. But he did not slacken his hold on her. Instead, he clasped his other hand over hers and fixed her with a look so serious and unguarded that all of her mistrust towards him and his kind vanished from her mind, if only for the moment. 

“Sakura, I want you to know that even without a bargain, I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

There was something so _ raw _ in Kakashi’s words and gaze, so laden with sincerity, that they stole her breath away. She didn’t know why but a blush bloomed across her cheeks at his admission. 

He gave her hand a soft squeeze and pulled away, his fingers leaving warm tracks in their wake, and Sakura’s cheeks grew all the redder. 

“Well,” she blustered, trying to work around whatever that had just been, “let’s get on with the next lesson.”

**Author's Note:**

> I really really hope you enjoyed this. I've never been so nervous about posting anything haha. I'd love feedback of any kind! I have the next couple chapters written, but I'm not too confident about them. I'm hoping posting the first chapter and getting some feedback will give me the confidence boost I'm looking for.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and please stay tuned for more!


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